Two mobile operating systems currently account for nearly 100% of the worldwide smartphone market. Building one is difficult, and most phone manufacturers offer higher use of resources, especially when Android is at your fingertips. While it is a potential differentiator, these firms have largely chosen to take care of Google’s mobile operating system, customized with skins and unique features.

Huawei recently bucked this trend by releasing Harmony OS, although this was a direct results of geopolitical restrictions on the usage of American products. However, despite its vast resources, the Chinese electronics giant has faced enormous difficulties in attempting to build its own alternative to Android.

Given its propensity to shake up the market, it’s perhaps not entirely surprising that London-based Nothing was capable of build its own mobile operating system from scratch. On Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, founder and CEO Carl Pei confirmed that the corporate is exploring what an actual Nothing operating system could seem like.

Pei praised smartphones as “our most important gateway to the people we care about and the information we need to use,” while criticizing the duopoly of Google and Apple within the industry.

“We’re figuring out how to maneuver here,” he added, “and possibly create something of our own. Some operating system.

The goal of such a move can be to expand Nothing’s influence within the industry while creating a completely recent revenue stream.

“Now you can influence the software,” Pei explained. “You can change the way people use their devices. On the business side, it is also very profitable. In some respects, being a hardware company sucks because of the supply chain, high capital expenditure, low margins, and high risk of product-market fit. In many ways, having some software revenue is much more convenient: higher margins. However, I think that the most important thing is still consumer satisfaction.”

The founder said he thinks the strategy of making a mobile operating system has turn into much easier because of the recent boom in artificial intelligence. Such technology will even go an extended approach to providing a level of customization that’s missing from existing platforms.

“If you think about the technical stack of an operating system, I don’t think we need to work on the lower parts of the stack – the drivers and how the hardware interfaces with the software and the kernel,” Pei added. “I don’t think we need to work on it, but we should work on user experience innovation because operating systems haven’t really changed in 40 years. These computers, smartphones and these devices have a lot of information about us. We do so much for them, but they don’t use any of this information to improve their experience.”

Asked whether the corporate expected to boost funds for such a project, Pei declined to comment.

“I don’t think it has to be much of an experience,” he said. This is applied artificial intelligence, it shouldn’t be the idea. We don’t build capabilities, we do not train large language models, we do not build text-to-speech or anything like that. That ship has sailed and it’s going to turn into extremely competitive. Two or three players will win big and the remainder will lose money.

Pei continues, “Whether we get funding or not, we can work on it.”

Artificial intelligence can be a crucial element of such an operating system, he explained, but it surely wouldn’t mean every thing.

“We shouldn’t call it an AI operating system,” he said. “Artificial intelligence is just a tool and ultimately it comes down to who can produce the best product, who has the best market fit and who can deliver the highest user satisfaction. Because without it, it just won’t work.”

Autonomous vehicle technology startup Aurora Innovation is targeting commercial deployment of its autonomous trucks for April 2025, pushing the timeline forward by a couple of quarter. The company originally planned to launch in late 2024. The company said it delayed the launch so it could proceed to test its autonomous driving technology.

“While this is slightly later than we had planned, this timeline is within the margin of error that we have anticipated and communicated through 2024,” Aurora CEO and co-founder Chris Urmson wrote within the report. earnings for the third quarter shareholder’s letter. “Since our intention is to introduce the Aurora driver with a crawl, walk and run approach, this change on our timeline will have a negligible financial impact.”

Aurora will enter the market as a carrier, but its ultimate goal is to introduce a driver-as-a-service model during which carriers purchase trucks with Aurora Driver technology on board after which offer their services through those trucks to shippers.

One way Aurora measures Aurora Driver performance and commercial readiness is thru on-site support, which the corporate expects might be the costliest support it provides. At the tip of the third quarter, Aurora Driver was delivering commercial loads without distant human support 80% of the time, a 75% increase over the second quarter. The goal is to reach 90% before commercial launch within the spring.

The startup intends to deploy up to 10 autonomous trucks during its commercial launch, and by the tip of 2025 it is predicted to increase them to several dozen.

Aurora has been testing commercial loads with pilot customers including FedEx, Werner, Schneider, Hirschbach, Uber Freight and others. The company is planning about 160 commercial loads per week, which Aurora said is greater than double last yr’s volume. As of October 27, 2024, Aurora trucks have autonomously delivered over 8,200 loads and traveled over 2.2 million commercial miles – all with a human behind the wheel.

Aurora, a pioneering pre-revenue construction technology company, reported third-quarter operating expenses of $196 million, including stock-based compensation of $35 million. That’s down from the $212 million it spent in the course of the same period last yr, which Aurora says shows its commitment to a lean path to commercialization.

The startup ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in money and investments after raising nearly half a billion dollars in August, which should get Aurora off the bottom in 2026 and fund the initial stages of scaling and getting to a spot of sustainability.

Former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday to discuss the challenges people face when trying to disrupt – each in the world of technology and beyond.

“One of the biggest challenges you’re probably going to face when you try to disrupt something – or you try to do something you’re passionate about and you end up disrupting something in the process, is that you’re going to encounter a lot of resistance,” Kaepernick said. “There are going to be hard times and in those moments you want to have people you can lean on, people who can support you and that really gives you that resilience.”

Kaepernick isn’t any stranger to disrupting the establishment, having made national headlines in 2016 when he took a knee to protest racial injustice. The former NFL star says that while he faced quite a lot of resistance, he also saw the have to create a greater and more equitable future.

“When you do that and you see such a strong reaction, you really gain perspective and insight,” Kaepernick said. “We have a protracted road ahead of us. But on the other hand, what I learned during this era, there are also many individuals who wish to go this great distance with you, and I feel the most beautiful thing about it’s that there was resistance to there was also quite a lot of organization.”

As someone who has had 1000’s of stories written about him, he now desires to help creators take control of their narratives with Lumi. The startup’s goal is to empower creators by helping them create and publish stories and content on their very own.

As for founders trying to pivot and explore their passions, Kaepernick had some advice.

“Do you do your homework and know why you do what you do,” he said. “And secondly, once you know it, go after it with passion and go after it with everything you have and take people with you. I wouldn’t be sitting here today, and none of you would know me at all, if it weren’t for the many people who have helped me, and that includes everyone from my wife to family and friends, teammates, coaches, some of them investors and advisors , whom I met along the way. So keep these people with you because it builds us up and makes us sustainable in the long run.”